By making Putin’s war a ‘holy war’, the patriarch has taken his church back to the darkest of tsarist times, writes Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher
As a lifelong friend of the Russian Orthodox Church, well aware of its profound spiritual gifts to world Christendom, let me thank you for your forthright editorial (3 April) chastising the Moscow patriarch for embracing the heresy of ethno-nationalist militarism. Western churches, too, have not been immune to that temptation. By making Putin’s war a “holy war”, the patriarch has betrayed the Christian faith and taken his church back to the darkest of tsarist times. Leo Tolstoy, for one, knew when to turn his back.
Holy Russia is represented today by courageous protesting priests and people, light years away from the pompous military cathedral that Patriarch Kirill recently consecrated with the new would-be tsar at his side. That is blasphemy. I pray for the day when Kyiv, the birthplace of Holy Rus, can again live at peace with Moscow and be welcomed into fellowship with the churches of the west. Given my experience as an emissary of the British churches in eastern Europe through the years of the cold war, I believe that a negotiated peace settlement, embracing both Russia and Ukraine, would begin to make possible the rebuilding of security and trust. Sadly, without a lot of forgiveness, that will not happen.
Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher
Wellington, New Zealand
